Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1887-09-07
WOMAN's OPPORTUNITY.
TALK ABOUT SUPERIORITY OF ONE
SEX OVER AN0THER-WASTE OF
INK AND SPEECH.
YOU CAN'T WEIGH AFFECTION
AGAINST AFFECTION.

Inn AMI SrEEOH.
YOU CAN'T WEIGH AFFECTION
AGAINST AFFECTION.
IF A WOMAN WANTS TO VOTE
SHE OUGHT TO VOTE.
IF A MAN WANTS TO EMBROIDEF
AND KEEP HOUSE HE OUGHT
TO BE ALLOWED TO. .
NOTHING GRANDER THAN TO BE
QUEEN OF HOME.
DIR. TALMAGE'S SERMON, AUG 20TH
THE HAMPToNs, August -"Woman's
Opportunity was the subject of discourse
by the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D. D..
to-day; and his text, $50 God created mar
in His own image. in the image of God Great
ed. He him male and female created he
them" Genesis i:27. Following is the
sermon in full =
In other words, God, who can make nc
| u
fc work, and to move in particular spheres
man to be regnant in his realm woman
to be dominant in hers. The boundary
| line between Italy and Switzerland, be-
tween England and Scotland, is not more
thoroughly marked than this distinction
between the empire masculine and the EN-
pire feminine. So entirely dissimilar are
the fields to which God called them, that
you can no more compare them than you
can oxygen and hydrogen, water and grass,
trees and stars.
All this talk about the superiority of one
sex to the other sex is an everlasting waste
of ink and speech. A jeweller may have a
scale SO delicate that he Can weigh the dust
of diamonds; but where are the scales so
delicate that you can weigh in them affec-
ton against affection, sentiment against
sentiment, thought against thought, soul
against soul, mans world against a
woman's world? You come out with your
stereotyped remark, the man is superior to
woman in intellect; and then 1 open on
my desk the swarthy, iron-typed, thunder
bolted writings of Harriet Martineau, and
Elizabeth Browning, and George Eliot
You come on with your stereotyped remark
about woman's superiority to man in the
item of affection; but l ask you where was
there more capacity to love than in John
the disciple, and Robert McCheyhe the
Scotchman, and John Summerfield the
Methodist, and Henry Martin the mission
ary? The heart of those men was SO large
that, after you had rolled into it two hemis-
pheres, there was room still left to marshal
the hosts of heaven and set up the throne
of the eternal Jehovah. deny to man the
throne intellectual. l deny to woman the
throne affectional. No human phraseology
will ever define the spheres, while there is
an intuition by which we know when a
man is in his realm and when woman is
in her realm, and when either of them is
out of it. No bungling Legislature ought
to attempt to make definition, or to say
'sThis is the line and that is the line." My
theory is that if a woman wants to vote,
she ought to vote, and that if a man wants
to embroider and keep house, he ought to
be allowed to embroider and keep house
There are masculine women and there are
effeminate men. My theory is, that you
have no right to interfere with any ones
doing anything that is righteous. Albany
and Washington might as we'll decree by
legislation how high a brown thrasher
should fly, or how deep a trout should
plunge, as to try to seek out the height or
the depth of woman's duty. The question
of capacity will settle finally the whole
question, the whole subject. When a
woman is prepared to preach, she will
preach, and neither Conference OR Presby-
terry can hinder her. When a woman is
prepared to move in highest commercial
spheres she will have great influence on
the Exchange, and n0Tboards of trade can
hinder her. l want woman to understand
that heart and brain can overly any bar
rier that politicians may set up, and that
nothing can keep her back or keep her
down but the question of incapacity.
| There are women, know, of most unde-
sirable nature, who wander up and down
the country--having no homes of their
own, OF forsaking their own homes-talk-
ing about their rights; and we know very
well that they themselves are fit neither to
vote, nor fit to keep house. Their mission
seems to be to humiliate the two sexes at
the thought of what any one OF us might
become. No one would want to live under
the laws that such women would enact, or
to have cast upon society the children that
such women would raise. But shall show
you this morning that the best rights that
women can own, she already has in he1
possession that her position in this coun-
try at this time is not one of commiseration,
but one of congratulation that the grand
eur and power of her realm have never yet
been appreciated ; that she sits to-day on a
throne so high that all the thrones of earth
piled on top of each other would not make
| for her footstool. Here is the platform
on which she stands. Away down below
it are the ballot box and the congressional
assemblage and the legislative hall
Woman always has voted and always will
vote. Our great grandfathers thought they
were by their votes putting Washington
into the presidential chair. No. His
mother by the principles she taught him,
and by the habits she inculcated, made
him President. 1t was Christian mothers
hand dropping the ballot when Lord Bacon
wrote, and Newton philosophical, and
Alfred the Great governed, and Jonathan
Edwards thundered of judgment to come.
How many men there have been in high
political station, who would have been in
sufficient to stand the test to which their
moral principal was put had it not been for
wife's voice.that encouraged them to do
right, and a wife's prayer that sounded
louder than the clafnor of partisanship
Why, my friends, the right of suffrage, as
we men exercise it, seems to be feeble
thing. You, Christian man, Come up to
the ballot box and you drop your vote.-
Right after you comes libertine, or sot
the ofscouring of the street-and he
drops his vote; and his vote counteracts
yours. But if in the quiet of home.life a
daughter by her Christian demeanor, wife
by her industry, a mother by her faithful
ness, casts vote in the right direction,
then nothing can resist it, and the influence
of that vote will throb through the .eterni
ties.
My chief anxiety then is not that woman
have other rights accorded her, but that
she by the grace of God, rise up to the
appreciation of the glorious rights she al.
ready possesses. This morning / shall
only have time to speak of one grand and
all-absorbing right that every woman has,
and that is to make home happy. That
realm no one has ever disputed with her.
Men may come home at noon or at night,
and they tarry comparatively little while;
but she, all day long, governs it, beauties
q -